The little girl’s sense of secrecy that developed at prepuberty only grows in importance. She closes herself up in fierce solitude: she refuses to reveal to those around her the hidden self that she considers to be her real self and that is in fact an imaginary character: she plays at being a dancer like Tolstoy’s Natasha, or a saint like Marie Leneru, or simply the singular wonder that is herself. There is still an enormous difference between this heroine and the objective face that her parents and friends recognize in her. She is also convinced that she is misunderstood: her relationship with herself becomes even more passionate: she becomes intoxicated with her isolation, feels different, superior, exceptional: she promises that the future will take revenge on the mediocrity of her present life. From this narrow and petty existence she escapes by dreams.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
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Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir
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desire is suffering
Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016; ‘Dream Reveals in Neon the Great Addictions, Frank Bidart ( @wahabibi ) | Dante and Virgil in Hell, William-Adolphe Bouguereau | Vestiges, Ángel García | Blasphemia, Eliran Kantor | So We Must Meet Apart, Jennifer S. Cheng ( @yoursoethereal ) | Prigione di Lacrime, Roberto Ferri | Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 2, 1928-9; Sunday, November 4th, Simone de Beauvoir ( @theoptia ) | Ludwig Drahosch | War of the Foxes, Richard Siken ( @elfreys )
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Essential Feminist Texts Booklist
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
A Vindication of The Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by Bell Hooks
Feminism is For Everybody: Passionate Politics by Bell Hooks
The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution by Shulamith Firestone
Sexual Politics by Kate Millett
Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner
Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape by Jessica Valenti
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit
The Female Gaze: Essential Movies Made by Women by Alicia Malone
Girlhood by Melissa Febos
The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel
Is This Normal?: Judgment-Free Straight Talk about Your Body by Dr. Jolene Brighten
Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D
The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism by Dr. Jennifer Gunter
The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain
Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn
The Turnaway Study: The Cost of Denying Women Access to Abortion by Diana Greene Foster, Ph.D
Regretting Motherhood: A Study by Orna Donath
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Simone de Beauvoir, from Letters to Sartre; September 7th, 1939
Text ID: I'm not thinking about the day when I'll see you again, […] I don’t need to see you — I'm not separated from you, I'm still in the same world as you. […] I love you. You haven’t left me
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I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself
Simone de Beauvoir
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As for us, whatever the case may be, we believe in freedom. Is it true that this belief must lead us to despair? Must we grant this curious paradox: that from the moment a man recognizes himself as free, he is prohibited from wishing for anything? On the contrary, it appears to us that by turning toward this freedom we are going to discover a principle of action whose range will be universal.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
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I have so much love in me that I would like to cry.
Simone de Beauvoir, Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Sylvia Plath, Clarice Lispector
buy me a coffee
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Simone de Beauvoir, from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre
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No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
- Simone de Beauvoir , The Second Sex
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[Simone de Beauvoir] describes the definitive thrill and sorrow of female adolescence—the realization that your body, and what people will demand of it, will determine your adult life. “If the young girl at about this stage frequently develops a neurotic condition,” de Beauvoir writes, “it is because she feels defenseless before a dull fatality that condemns her to unimaginable trials; her femininity means in her eyes sickness and suffering and death, and she is obsessed with this fate.”
Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
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